Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Free education anyone?


There's no doubt the web is a great source of free information but knowing that there are institutions offering free education online is simply astounding! I've enrolled in a few online courses myself and they didn't come cheap.

And having known what these sites offer, it would be a great loss for people who come across these sites not to avail of what's on offer. I myself have signed up for Code Year and bookmarked W3Schools.

I've been viewing TED for a while and they've got excellent videos that are very educational and inspiring.

I'll have a closer look at MIT's OpenCoursewareProgram as well as the University of the People, which offers free, yes free, tuition fee. But conditions apply of course.

Of course, there's iTunes U which is of course accessible via iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. Then there's Peer to Peer University, which is a collaborative effort of volunteers. Ivy-league institutions also have Academic Earth, which I will be exploring later.

Grade school and high school students and teachers don't miss out on free resources. There's Khan Academy and there's CK-12 a collection of text books.

So what are you waiting for?






Friday, January 20, 2012

Google's Internet Safety Campaign

Google's recently launched Internet safety campaign is long overdue but better late than never.

It's a one-stop-site that brings together tips on online safety from malware that can harm your devices to protecting one's online identity. It also includes info on data management. I especially find the jargon busters very helpful.

Please help spread the site. It's a definite must-read for all.

Monday, January 09, 2012

Summing up Fair Use

In our training classes on research for higher education students, we were brainstorming on how best to explain "Fair Use" in relation to copyright and plagiarism.

It can't get any simpler than this: Seth's Blog: Simple thoughts about fair use.

Friday, January 06, 2012

Just AWESOME!

What to do with old books

We're currently weeding our entire collection not so much as to make room for new books but to significantly decrease the collection so there would be extra space to build study areas.

It was quite timely coming across this article on giving books second lives. It pains me to throw away old books so maybe I can get around and make a project one of these days.